Black Blood, Black Hearts
by She who is made of stars
Summary: The twisted tales of the Ancient and Most Noble House of Black. / Some of the chapters include Blackcest (no parent/child), abuse, character death, psychological issues, general angst, etc. Some are surprisingly fluffy. The chapters are mostly unrelated, but some could be set in the same universe and a few are direct sequels to each other. Rating will almost definitely go up later.


**So, this is the first chapter for Black Blood, Black Hearts. I posted a similar thing earlier as a stand-alone drabble, but this version is edited and about twice as long. I don't think it requires any warnings, really - it's surprisingly clean. I'm extremely curious to know what you guys think, so if you have time to leave a review I would really appreciate it!**

**I hope you enjoy reading :) Oh, and I don't own Harry Potter.**

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When Regulus comes home, the house is filled with shadows and smells vaguely like fire. There's no smoke, no screams, so he suspects there's nothing wrong, but he keeps quiet all the same as he walks further inside, leaving his trunks by the door.

The trail leads him past a note that is stuck to the kitchen door.

_Regulus,_

_Your father and I are having dining with Cygnus and Druella tonight.  
__The House-Elf is helping here with the cooking, which leaves you alone for the evening.  
__There is something to eat for you in the kitchen._

_Your mother_

He can't help the stab of dissapointment – the note hardly acknowledges the return of her youngest son, her favourite, the child she hasn't seen since Christmas, which means that Regulus is still _not good enough_.

Sometimes he thinks Sirius is right when he says that Mother doesn't love them, that Mother only loves herself and he and his brother and their father are nothing but tools to show people how much better she is, but then he pushes the thought away because if he keeps thinking like that she really will stop loving him.

_Sirius_, Regulus suddenly realizes. The note doesn't mention Sirius, and even though he's seen his brother not an hour ago on King's Cross, he feels dread feeling his lungs, spilling into his stomach and seeping into his veins, mixing with his blessed blood - because he recognizes the signs. The image of the pictures in Black Manor flashes across his mind – Bellatrix and Narcissa smiling at the camera, Andromeda spelled away – and Regulus wonders if this is when they fall apart.

_The drawing room,_ he thinks, he needs to see the drawing room.

The tapestry is still on the wall, and though there is no damage obvious at first sight, this is definitely where the smell of fire comes from. At the bottom line, where he and Sirius are lined up next to each other, next to their cousins, too – Narcissa and Bellatrix, who are Good like Regulus is (or tries to be, anyway), and Andromeda, burned away, because she is rebellious and disrespectful and disobeying but still Sirius' favourite, still the one who always made him laugh and the one he snuck out with when last year's Christmas party got too boring to bear.

_He likes me, too,_ he thinks. _They disowned her; she's not even our cousin anymore. _Only Sirius doesn't seem to care much about the rules and Regulus wouldn't be surprised if the Gryffindor hadn't stopped talking to their cousin at all, and his brother has barely talked to him in months, so he pushes the thoughts away and forces himself to properly see what he already knows.

Sirius is gone. His name and picture have been replaced by a shadow, a burn mark, perfectly circular, perfect like all things Black except for Sirius. But Sirius isn't Black anymore, and yet he's the most perfect person Regulus has ever met and _they're not brothers anymore_.

Regulus' throat dries up, suddenly. The dread in his veins is thick and heavy, and it weighs him down, drags him straight through the floor into the dark room in the basement, but he can't show any of this because _Mother does not back down_ and Regulus knows that if he tries to defend his brother he, too, will be nothing but a burn in his mother's eyes, so he swallows hard and turns around. Without asking for permission, his feet take him across the landing, to Sirius' bedroom. It's locked, and Regulus briefly wonders who closed it last – Sirius, he suspects, because a simple Alohomora opens it and if his mother had meant to bury the memories of her eldest child in the red-and-gold room then she would have done it properly.

He doesn't enter the room but stops in the doorway, one hand on the wood, staring.

Sirius' room isn't empty. The Gryffindor banner still hangs over the bed, the furniture hasn't moved, the four boys in the picture on the wall are still goofing around... but there's nothing else. Sirius took everything that was important to him to Hogwarts, and this year it's not coming back.

It'll never come back. Everything that's important to Sirius has been taken with him, and Regulus is still at Grimmauld Place, and he has no brother.

Slowly, he closes the door, locks it with a wave of his wand, and walks downstairs to go unpack his trunk.

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**This chapter was written for the Race to Mount Potter competition on HPFC. Prompt: Shadow.**


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